MY FAVOURITE

ghost stories, by the genius M.R. James, usually involve someone being a little too curious, and so releasing from its hole or tomb a nasty force he wishes he could put back but can’t.

Pornography is like this. In my wild 1960s days I thought it would be clever to read Last Exit To Brooklyn (which had just escaped prosecution) as a gesture of support for freedom of expression. It poisoned and polluted my imagination, irrevocably. To this day, I wish I hadn’t read it.

The best thing to do with pornography is to keep it out of reach by the forces of shame and law. The claim that legalising it would be a great liberation has turned out to be one of the greatest lies of our time. It has enslaved millions.

It is not a passive, dead thing that can be examined in a classroom. It reaches out and leaps into your mind. Jenni Murray could not be more wrong in saying that children should study it.